Owl Ginger Tea

I'm feeling a nap coming on, so I'll make this short and sweet. Owl Instant Ginger Tea with Honey is my new favorite food product for these reasons:

1) It costs $3.09 for a bag of 20 "sachets"
2) You don't even have to stir it after adding water
3) It looks like fish food when you pour it into your mug
5) The text on the package informs me that it is "Produced under the most hygienic conditions using state-of-the-art technology." Thank goodness!

Je t'adore, Tante Marie

Remember how I was going to move out to the Bay Area and get my start in the food industry by working at Ramekins? And remember how my job ended after the holidays, and then my boyfriend came to visit, and then my family came to visit, and then we went to Hawaii, and then Eliz came and we ate our faces off?

All that is over now, and I am left with an open stretch of time (well, one month) until my lease runs out and the parental payroll dries up and I am forced to get my act together and get a real job (shudder). Or go to cooking school.

Before doomsday arrives, I would like to have something to show for myself besides a gut and an ulcer. To this end, I have been pursuing the chance to write restaurant reviews for the Sonoma Sun. I drove up there yesterday to meet with the staff and sign the paperwork, but was told as soon as I walked in the door that the paper no longer has enough space to continue running dining-related content. It seems that my fabulous food writing career has taken a nosedive shortly before takeoff. However, the Sun is graciously allowing me to write two pieces that will be published when space permits, so tomorrow night I will be dining at Taqueria Los Primos in order to generate enough fodder for an article.

In other news, I had a tour and an interview at the Tante Marie Cooking School in San Francisco this afternoon. I really just wanted the tour, but it seems that most cooking schools will manage to wrestle an interview out of any unsuspecting individual that walks through their doors. Sensing that an interrogation was imminent, I made a point of wearing my special sparkly eyeliner to dazzle and bewitch the interviewer. I think it worked, because at one point she said that she could see a passion for food in my eyes. Little did she know it was just Bonne Bell silica.

Tante Marie was adorable. It’s tiny; just 16 students taking a six month program that costs as much as, say, a brand-new Japanese sedan. There are two smallish kitchens, and when I arrived the class was learning how to make caramel. On my way out, I spotted a divine-looking plate of Florentines. I have to confess, my thought process went something like this:

1) “I wish I could eat one of those Florentines.”
2) “If I enrolled here, would they let me eat some of those Florentines?”
3) “Maybe I should enroll here.”

They probably don’t offer tours on fish-gutting day, or during the gamebird-plucking-and-deboning lesson; outsiders with fat checkbooks are only allowed in when a big, sumptuous platter of fresh candy and cookies has been placed near the front door and the smell of caramelized sugar hangs seductively in the air. The strategy works, and it has caused me to repeatedly fantasize about My Life as a Cooking School Student all afternoon. I’m sure it would be enormously hard, but in the fantasy there are no sore feet, no irksome classmates and no gargantuan tuition bills. Just me and a perfect Hollandaise.

Lalime's and a happy coincidence

Two nights ago, I met my dad at Lalime’s in Berkeley. My new food guru Laura had recommended it, and I noticed that it has received fairly stellar reviews across the board. They were featuring a special prix-fixe Lebanese-Armenian menu in honor of their daughter’s departure for the American University of Beirut, so we both decided to give it a whirl.

Three hours later, I was so stuffed that I was unable to shovel in the dessert course, a plate of karabij (four dense little semolina rolls hiding under a generous dollop of rosewater meringue). Lalime’s is a jolly, comfortable spot, with warm yellow walls and friendly staff. Our courses arrived at a leisurely pace, and my favorites were the maani (heavily spiced, tiny lamb sausages) and the refreshing, lemony fatoush salad. The final dish included two deliciously tender strips of chicken striped with a creamy yogurt sauce, lying atop a pile of dolmas. I think I made the waiter a little sad when I couldn’t finish it all, and my dad said he had a hangdog look as he cleared our plates. I just couldn’t do it. The consistently huge meals I have eaten over this past week have forced me to approach dining out as an athlete might approach Olympic training. I have to psyche myself up, locate my personal faith in the power of my own gluttony, and convince myself that my stomach will be able to meet the challenge of accepting obscure ingredients and massive portions. Sometimes I fail.

Coincidentally, my cousin Michel and her husband Stephen were seated at the table next to us. Stephen does the wines for Lalime’s and kindly introduced the owner Haig Krikorian to us, who was extremely sweet and answered our questions about the dishes. We also got to chat with Patricia Unterman, the food critic for the SF Examiner and one of Michel and Stephen’s dining companions. By the time we left, I felt sort of dazzled by the combination of rosewater, Pinot Noir and my first encounter with a real, live food critic (who was wonderfully friendly, by the way, and helpfully answered some of my silly food writing queries). Starstruck, I completely forget how to get back to Marin and ended up driving around Oakland warehouses aimlessly for twenty minutes as I tried to regain the highway.

Feeding frenzy weekend

Click here for pictures of the weekend's highlights.

I have been unable to post for the past few days because I have been too busy stuffing myself at every possible opportunity. And happily, there have been many, many opportunities.

This weekend was truly wonderful, and it wasn’t just because every single meal I ate was delicious. It was because my pal Eliz was here, and because I got to see lots of other friends, and because I got to meet Laura and Andy, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Bay Area restaurants and all other things food- and wine-related puts me absolutely to shame. I rarely meet people my own age who are passionate about eating well, so the combination of a succession of big, beautiful meals and obsessive food conversation was enough to make me weep mastic tears of joy.

THURSDAY
On Thursday I met my old friend Jeff for brunch at the Anchorage 5 Diner in Sausalito. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and I don’t think either one of us has changed much. He still loves the color orange and has a million jobs, and I still lack direction and focus.

For him: the pancake sandwich. For me: the fried egg sandwich. Lo, what a glorious creation is the fried egg sandwich! It’s similar to a plate of eggs and bacon, but more portable and more properly suited to bridge that pesky breakfast/lunch gap than, say, a BLT.

FRIDAY
On Friday morning, my dear friend Eliz arrived for the weekend from Eugene. I anticipated that sustained feasting would occur during her visit, but truly I was unprepared for the feats of culinary excess that were about to transpire.

We immediately headed up to Yountville, where we convinced ourselves that we would order a budget-conscious late lunch at Bouchon. We both should have known that whenever we’re together, we’re unable to exercise any kind of restraint and always veer directly towards the most deliriously indulgent offerings on any menu. Resigned to this mutual weakness, we ordered a $45 petit plateau of seafood that featured a meaty-looking lobster perched atop a gorgeous array of clams, mussels, oysters and shrimp. I swear, the petit plateau immediately made us the envy of everybody in that room, even the snooty-looking “Wine Country Couple” seated at a neighboring table (you know, polarfleece and diamonds). We also ordered a carafe of Sancerre, and a few appetizers to accompany our shellfish bonanza, including beignets de brandade de morue and salade de poireaux frais. Both were fine, but not mind-blowing. We concluded our first 2 ½ hour, $105 lunch with a tarte au citron that had the lightest, fluffiest crust ever. Decadence on a Roman scale, I tell you. After this weekend, I have been seriously rethinking our century’s aversion to the vomitorium.

We couldn’t possibly eat another bite, so naturally we headed next door to the Bouchon Bakery and purchased a sack of cookies, pates de fruits and small cakes that we wolfed down in the courtyard outside. Still flushed from our brush with Thomas Keller (or at least his fish and macaroons), we popped into the Niebaum-Coppola winery where I fondled the Sofia Blanc de Blancs lovingly without purchasing it, thanks to a rare moment of fiscal restraint. I think I'm just attracted to it because deep in my heart I believe that drinking it might make me as cool as Sofia herself. Also, I like its little pink bag. We then headed up to Calistoga to take mud baths at the Golden Haven Spa, laughing hysterically throughout the entire treatment.

Pseudo-scientifically cleansed of toxins, we returned to Fairfax, virtuously sampled some raw vegan entrees at Lydia’s Lovin’ Foods and then collapsed into bed, keenly aware that a challenging day of gorging lay ahead of us.

SATURDAY
The next morning, we hustled down to Noe Valley to meet Lacey and Zak for breakfast at Miss Millie’s. I guess we need to work on our hustle, because we were very late. The highlight of the meal was a starter of delicate prosciutto, gorgonzola, peach and fig wraps that we shared as a group. I had never thought of ordering a starter at brunch, but clearly I have much to learn.

Later, we took the BART to the Ferry Terminal Building, met Laura, and proceeded to eat everything that caught our collective eye. This included but was not limited to many chocolate truffles from Scharffen Berger and Recchiuti, macaroons in every flavor from Miette, expensive plum yogurt from Cowgirl Creamery, and a groaning platter (ok, two platters) of oysters from Hog Island Oyster Company.

After a quick tour of Hayes Valley and the many kinds of expensive plastic furniture available for purchase there, we changed into slinky clothes and met up for a vegan extravaganza (two words I have never before used together) at Millennium. Our cocktails weren’t so great, but the food was quite wonderful. We grew giddy with delight and passed around endless plates of complicated dishes featuring things like oyster mushrooms, kombu noodles, tofu, hubbard squash and pomegranate seeds. I ate so much so quickly that I really lost track of everything that we ordered. That night we went home early in order to rest up for the next scheduled round of excess.

SUNDAY
Eliz and I had to set the alarm and drag ourselves out of bed at 8 a.m. in order to meet Laura and Andy at La Note in Berkeley, before the crowds descended upon that establishment’s pillowy orange-cardamom brioche French toast, gingerbread pancakes and creamy goat cheese scrambled eggs. The café au lait comes in bowls, the hostess has an adorable French accent, and merguez sausage is available as a side. What more can you ask for in a breakfast place?

Laura then took us on a tour of the Berkeley Bowl supermarket, which was astonishing, and kindly offered to show us around Oakland in her double-cream-colored Mini. Our friend Rachael joined us, and we wiled away the hours until it was time to eat again, this time at Vik’s, an Indian place with great food and an ambience that reminded me of dining in a well-lit warehouse. By this point I was reaching a limit that I had never before even come close to testing, and the piles of chaat we had ordered began to swim sickeningly before my eyes.

But I pressed on past the point of no return, and we all later managed to sample approximately eight kinds of sake at the Takara Sake tasting room. The insanity reached its conclusion at the Albatross, where we ate countless bowls of popcorn and drank more, more, more. I finally went home and beached myself, eating only a handful of the previous day’s smashed Miette macaroons for dinner. The rest of the group ended up at Cesar. How they managed that final meal, I will never know.

Post-Hawaii pork dinner

After overdosing on various combinations of tropical fruits and fish in Hawaii (see previous post), I arrived home craving something warm, cozy and comforting. I decided to go grocery shopping and eventually succumbed to the siren call of the San Anselmo Andronico's, a repository of overpriced gourmet treats that boasts such luxuries as an exotic olive bar, an English food shelf and a small selection of Le Creuset items. Who ever heard of selling Le Creuset in a supermarket, I ask you? Only in Marin.

I dropped $62 on a handheld basket of items that should have cost nowhere near $62, but let's not linger on that. I didn't know what I was going to do with any of it, but when I laid it all out on the check-out belt the guy in front of me bellowed, "That looks like it will turn into a delicious dinner!", which made me feel very validated.

I lugged it all home, then decided that I felt a little wiped out and opened a can of Spaghettios for lunch. This is my dirty little secret: I obsess about quality food all day long - in this blog, with my friends, with my parents, at work - and yet sometimes I still choose to wolf down a can of Campbell's or make a pot of ramen when I'm left to my own devices. Please don't hate me for my hypocrisy. Anyway, didn't Emerson say, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"? Everybody benefits from variety, even if it comes in the form of extremely salty and highly processed canned goods with negligible nutritional value.

I got my act together as the afternoon wore on (maybe my cells were so engorged with salt that my heart rate sped up) and prepared a lovely little dinner. It included:

Arugula with grape tomatoes and Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog goat cheese. The arugula appeared to have been at the end of its short lifespan, but it still tasted okay. The goat cheese was excellent: creamy, tangy and surrounded by a delightfully gooey inner rind.

For my entree, I pan-fried some pork loin medallions and then whipped up a little cider-herb reduction. This was satisfying because it allowed me to utilize two products that have been languishing in my cupboard: a bottle of black cherry balsamic vinegar that I got for free from Ramekins, and a bottle of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider that I won at a bingo game at my sister's house (don't you wish your Saturday nights were this wild?). I dumped a lot of the cider and a little of the vinegar in the pan, added a ton of garlic, scallions, butter and a wad of herbs (rosemary, sage and marjoram, I believe) and boiled it down to a syrupy consistency. In the meantime, I mashed some Yukon Golds with butter, sauteed garlic, scallions and half and half. Here is the humble result:

I know it's not spectacular to look at, but it sure tasted good. The pork was particularly nice; Andronico's charged me $7 for three little medallions, but they were definitely worth it - juicy, thick and full of porky goodness, not like the hockey puck pig that is usually available at big chain supermarkets.

Fruity fish and local grinds on Kauai

Click to see my full album of Kauai food pictures!

"Hawaiians don't eat until they're full, they eat until they're tired."
-Local saying

Although this approach definitely violates my own personal code of ingestion (a surprisingly puritanical system of moderation developed after spending too many late nights flipping through Newsweek while waiting for my dinner to stop backing up on me), I certainly respect any cultural group that embraces gluttony to such an advanced degree. Over the past ten days, I tried to do my part to live up to this standard as best I could, and I have the tight jeans to prove it.


Local organic fruit from Banana Joe's fruit stand near Hanalei.

I returned from Kauai yesterday. This was my second time visiting Hawaii, which meant I was better prepared to sniff out the island’s more elusive culinary delights instead of resigning myself to the standard, horrifyingly-priced tourist fare. But I ate plenty of that stuff anyway, since this was a family trip and sometimes it’s just easier to pay $25 for extremely marginal pasta than it is to demand that your sunbaked parents circle endlessly around an abandoned industrial park searching for that authentic Hawaiian hole-in-the-wall that serves tender kalua pork and homemade liliko'i pie.

Tourist food in Hawaii is pretty limited in scope, and is generally outrageously expensive. I guess that’s the definition of tourist food: a set list of dishes which are meant to inspire a sense of comfort and familiarity in the weary traveler while managing to extract a maximum amount of her money. On the islands, this takes shape in an unlimited number of rotating fresh fish dishes which are typically available grilled or, for those who wish to suppress any evidence of the fact that they’re eating seafood, blackened. Whether the fish is ahi, opah, opakapaka or mahimahi, it is always accompanied by a sauce, a salsa, a relish or a chutney that utilizes mango, papaya, pineapple, passion fruit or some combination of the above. Obviously unlimited permutations are possible here, but there is also the high probability of monotony after the fourth night of pineapple-encrusted ono or mango-soaked monchong. Add to this the fact that you will pay upwards of $25 for each fillet and you can see how a person might go a little loco moco.

Which is what I did, when I sought out Mark’s Place in the aforementioned industrial park in Puhi and placed my lunch order. It was hard to find, but I was determined to eat as much local food as I could and nothing would stop me from obtaining the beef and sugar that is my right. Contemporary Hawaiian food is a fascinating hodgepodge of Asian cuisines with a little (okay, a lot) of good old-fashioned American grease thrown in. Unfortunately this combination has resulted in epidemic levels of obesity and heart disease, and there are major initiatives afoot to encourage locals to improve their diets. Even more unfortunately, this combination of Asian austerity and American overindulgence tastes really good.

At least, this is the conclusion that I arrived at after sampling my loco moco plate lunch, comprised of a fried egg perched atop a peppery hamburger resting on sticky rice. The whole mess is then served drowned in thick, rich gravy.

I thought I would take a few bites for the sake of experience and then toss the rest (remember my code of puritanical restraint?). Instead I took two bites and polished off the remainder in five minutes flat. It was sublime: salty, greasy and meaty, with the rice acting as a kind of sponge to soak up the excess gravy and the egg yolk. Ono, indeed.

Since I was on a quest of sorts, I managed to squeeze in as many local dishes and products as I could during my vacation. Eventually I had to steal the rental car away from my parents for the day in order to pursue my island food survey unfettered. A quick summary of my experiences are available below; one of the standouts was a chocolate chip and arare cookie from a local grinds place in Puhi. I just grabbed it off the counter because it said “arare” and I didn’t know what that was, and I generally like to eat anything that I don’t recognize. Arare turns out to be a kind of crack seed, which isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds but sure tastes good (“Of course it does,” you’re thinking, “because it’s CRACK!” You’re so immature.). I would never guess that sweet soy crackers would make a nice addition to a chocolate chip cookie, but it really does work, probably succeeding on the same principles that make chocolate-covered pretzels so addictive.

The worst meal of the trip, I am sorry to say, came from Sabella’s Restaurant near our condo in Princeville. We had eaten there the first night we arrived and had been stunned into silence at just how expensive everything was, but to their credit I had a fruity fish dish that wasn’t bad. Later in the week, it was growing late and we had nothing in our fridge, so my mom and I decided in desperation to get take-out from Sabella’s once again. We ordered lasagna (around $20) and a tomato salad with Maui onions and Kauai goat cheese ($12). One and a half hours later it was ready, and it wasn’t lasagna, because they ran out. Instead it was a stingy handful of spaghetti cloaked in an amazingly mediocre tomato sauce. The grossest insult of all was the salad, which consisted of six razor-thin slices of unripe tomato, a few daubs of lovely goat cheese, and a scattering of microscopic slivers of onion. There may have been some pepper sprinkled about as well, but my memory grows hazy with the tragedy of it all. My mom and I were so hungry by this point that we were reduced to scraping individual tomato molecules off the Styrofoam containers in order to make sure we had eaten every last bit of food Sabella’s had sent our way. My dad, who had made himself a peanut butter, jelly and onion sandwich (!) hours earlier, sat on the couch contentedly watching a tape of South Pacific while we divvied up our meager yet pricey portions of tourist scraps. Serves us right, I guess.

Local Foods Sampled:
Note: The fruity fish is so ubiquitous that I didn’t even bother to record it.
Spam musubi from Pono Market in Kapa’a

Chocolate chip and arare cookies, butter mochi from Joni Hana in Puhi
Sunrise papaya and pineapple from Foodland Market in Princeville
Portuguese sausage from the Hanalei Wake-Up Café
Apple bananas from the Hanalei Farmer’s Market
Hanalei Sunset (guava, passion fruit, pineapple and strawberry) shave ice atop mac nut ice cream from Wishing Well Shave Ice in Hanalei

Kauai Gold beer
Organic fruit smoothie from Banana Joe's near Hanalei
Lilikoi mousse from Princeville Resort
Taro fritters from Postcards Café in Hanalei
Ahi tacos from Tropical Taco in Hanalei
Thai sweet chili and garlic shrimp from Shrimp Station in Waimea
Maui Wowie Kona coffee and caramel chocolate bar
Hawaiian Sun strawberry and guava jam

Plate Lunches:
Ginger-shoyu chicken, kalua pork and sweet chili chicken wings from Hanalei Mixed Plate
Kalua pork, ahi poke and lomilomi salmon from Polynesia Café
Loco moco from Mark’s Place

The hip restaurant ...and my parents

My parents are in town visiting before we all jet off to Kauai tomorrow. Last night we met our cousins Michel and Tony at Cesar, a tapas bar in Berkeley. The occasion was particularly interesting for me because Michel’s husband, Stephen Singer, is apparently a mover and shaker in the food world. He is one of the owners of Cesar, as well as another place in Berkeley called Downtown, imports wine and olive oil, and used to be married to Alice Waters. It was great to meet Michel and hear her thoughts on the restaurant business, California life and her own background.

Currently Stephen and Michel are starting up a winery on their property in Sebastopol. The prospect of owning a winery began to sound decidedly less sexy after Michel regaled us with tales of their constant Bill-Murray-esque struggles to control the gopher population in the vineyard. She explained the mechanics of a device called The Rodenator using the sort of dreamy tone other women might reserve for a pair of diamond earrings or a romantic trip to Tahiti. The Rodenator gasses gophers by flooding their tunnels with oxygen and propane, and is unfortunately off-limits to Michel because they are growing their grapes organically. A girl can dream.

Cesar was great. I love eating meals with big groups; it allows you to sample just about anything on the menu, pass plates around and generally overwhelm your taste buds. And probably expose yourself to a variety of germs and microbes, but isn’t culinary variety worth the slight risk?* I’ll list everything that we had at the end of this post, but now I’m all self-conscious about it because my parents went on at length about my capacity to remember everything I eat. I feel ridiculous for allowing my brain to get clogged up with such useless information, and at the same time I feel slightly pressured to produce a perfect verbatim report of all that was served last night. Michel reassured me that Stephen has this same capacity for wines, and is able to recall just about every single glass he has ever had in his entire life. So I’m not a freak! Or at least I’m not alone in my freakishness.

It was odd going to what I would consider to be a “hip” restaurant with my parents. I knew they would later complain about the noise level (which they did, and always do …I think their ideal restaurant would be situated in a crypt) but overall I thought they behaved themselves admirably and everybody had a good time. Cesar wasn’t hip in a judgmental, cold way; it just seemed to be filled with lots of happy young Berkeleyites out for some wine and conversation.

Because I had wiled away an hour at Ramekins reading the introduction to the Cesar cookbook, I had an inkling of the incredible toil that had gone into opening it, and was more appreciative of some of the aesthetic and culinary choices that the owners had made (namely, they choose to use small, flimsy napkins just like the ones in Spain. I don’t understand those, by the way. Why must Mediterranean countries all use the most universally awful paper goods? Greece has the most laughably atrocious - and yet ubiquitous – napkins, tablecloths and toilet paper ever. EVER.)

It made me think about restaurant design in general, and how so much effort goes into planning a menu and a space and a kitchen, and yet I would bet that that the vast majority of patrons hardly notice anything beyond their plate. Restaurants that remain open for years must have an indescribable something about them that ensures their continued popularity (I refuse to use the phrase “Je ne sais quoi” here, unless you agree to imagine it being spoken in a fabulously pretentious French accent inflected with heavy irony). I would like to think that all it takes to cement a restaurant’s success is good food, but that’s clearly not the case. Otherwise how can one explain the way people keep returning like lemmings to crappy places such as Wild Ginger in Seattle?

Did you notice how elegantly I slipped that dig in there? My friend Jason emailed from Beijing this morning to describe his latest Chinese food escapades. He made the mistake of mentioning Wild Ginger, which served to remind me of its existence, thus fanning the flames of my hatred. This is the perfect example of a restaurant that continues to draw in crowds despite the fact that it serves overpriced, decidedly mediocre pan-Asian food in a pretentious setting. I’ll say no more. Let the Cesar menu begin!

Wine: 2001 Mauro

Tapas:
Marinated olives
Yellowfin tuna with mojo verde
Papas fritas with cumin, garlic and aioli (Divine.)
Shrimp and crab cakes
Cod and potato cazuela (This was basically a brandade, and was excellent. Velvety texture, crispy crust, and very comforting.)
Mixed greens salad with pumpkin, pomegranate and queso fresco
Beef filet with mashed potatoes (This was delish, but my description sucks. The beef was meltingly tender.)
Duck salad with braised endive, olives and oranges
Lamb bocadillo
Manchego and mixed greens bocadillo

Desserts:
Bread pudding with orange-caramel sauce
Medjool date and almond ice cream
Crema de chocolate

I tried to order something called Leche Frita, which was described to me as deep-fried flan, but they were out. I want deep-fried flan. I want deep-fried flan right now.

Also, I just realized that they list the menu on their website each day. I want to assure you that I posted this all on my own before I noticed. My freakishness remains intact.


* In my co-op in college, we all used to eat off one another’s plates and share toothpaste and razors in the bathroom. I didn’t realize how disgusting this was until we all came down with mono at the same time. It could have been worse. Many of the people in a neighboring co-op got scabies after one of its members decided to sleep with an itinerant tattooist that had been crashing on their sofa. Nasty.

The food of the past few days

Where and what Randy and I ate during his visit, in order:

New Cheung Hing (Roasted duck over rice; black bean pork)
Koffee Klatch (Egg scramble plate with veggies and herbs; hash browns; bacon; toast)
In n Out Burger (Chocolate shake, cheeseburger, no onions; fries)
Basque Boulangerie (Chocolate-raspberry slice of cake, café au lait, chocolate-dipped Florentine)
Ramekins (1 boozy chocolate truffle each)
My sister’s house (Herbed bbq chicken; roasted potatoes; spinach salad with bacon and hardboiled eggs; garlic broccoli; Sauvignon blanc)
Fairfix Café (Hummus, feta and tabouleh sandwich; breakfast bagel sandwich with coffee)
Mendocino Café (1/2 Dungeness crab in garlic and white wine sauce; chicken burrito)
Mendocino Chocolate Company (2 crappy chocolates, toffee)
Bridget Dolan’s Pub (Margarita pizza; bangers and mash, Black and Tan)
Gualala Hotel Restaurant (Local salmon fish and chips; BLT)
Fradelizio's (Spaghetti with meatballs; garlic bread; Sebastiani chardonnay)

Mi Pueblo (1 beef cheek taco; 1 shrimp tostada; 2-enchiliada combo plate)
Fresca (Chicken brochettes with potato cakes, soy-ginger sauce and chimichurri; ceviche chino in lettuce cups, ½ roasted chicken with seasoned fries and salad; 1 glass Cava)
Mitchell’s Ice Cream (1 scoop ginger, 1 scoop chocolate-caramel crackle; Rachael had Cinnamon Snap)

Ultimate Chocolate Machine

Last Tuesday was my last day of work at Ramekins. But more importantly, it also marked the first time that I put “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” to use.

Some of you may be familiar with “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine”, as seen on TV. My well-meaning boyfriend Randy decided that just sending me three of his beautiful matted photos for Christmas was not enough. He had to stun me with something more. He had to pinpoint a present that would help me realize my innermost passions and dreams. He had to wow me with The Ultimate Gift.

And so the FedEx package arrived at my doorstep (sent at great speed and even greater cost, because one should not be forced to wait for such a gift. One simply should not be forced to wait a single moment longer than necessary, I tell you!), and I began my acquaintance with “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine.” I unwrapped it and stared in awe at the text on the side of the box, which braggingly proclaimed that it contained over 90 pieces.

“Over 90 pieces?” I thought nervously. “Where the hell am I going to put 90 pieces of chocolate-making paraphernalia? I live in a small studio! Will I have to rent a storage locker? Will I have to dedicate the trunk of my car to wrappers and molds and tempering equipment?”

I needn’t have worried. At least 75 of the pieces are twist-ties and small cellophane bags. Oh, and lollipop sticks. The other 15 include flimsy plastic molds in the shape of teddy bears and American flags, and a nonstick pot.

After pawing around in the package, I concluded that the manufacturer surely must have made a mistake. There was nothing inside that remotely resembled a machine. There was a small squeeze bottle, sure, and two plastic dipping forks that resembled gynecological instruments. But there was a definite lack of anything mechanized or machine-like. After cross-checking the packing list, I arrived at an unsettling conclusion. Apparently, “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” is in fact comprised of nothing more than a small, cheap, double boiler.

I swallowed my disappointment and decided to make lemonade from lemons. More specifically, I decided to make teddy-bear-shaped lollipops from a small, cheap, double boiler. I phoned my friend Rachael.

“Randy is coming to visit tomorrow. I need to show him how much his gift of “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” means to me. Can you come over and help me make chocolates in the shape of American flags?”

Rachael is a stand-up kind of gal. She’s there when you’re down and out, when you’re having chest pains and existential crises and need assurance that a friend is looking out for you. She’s there to explain that you’re mispronouncing “San Anselmo” and “ahorita”. She’s there to take you on a driving tour of Fairfax and the Sean Penn residence, and to offer you a walking tour of the block that’s featured in the credits of “Full House”. She’s there to express horror at the callous way she thinks she’s being portrayed in your blog, and to demand a paragraph extolling her virtues.

“There is nothing I dream of more than coming to Fairfax tomorrow and helping you make chocolates in the shape of American flags.”

Fast-forward one day. The cutting board was out, and I was chopping crystallized ginger into bits. Rachael was slicing up Ghirardelli Dark. Mini Oreos awaited submersion. “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” was firing on all cylinders. “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” was operating at maximum capacity. “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” was boiling a small amount of water.

We melted the chocolate in its upper chamber, and poured it into the various disturbingly-shaped molds. I guess I am not a normal American, because the idea of biting into an American-flag-shaped chocolate does not fill me with patriotic zeal. Normal Americans eat that shit up, just like they eat up bags of red, white and blue tortilla chips and airbrushed flag ice cream cakes. Nor do I find the prospect of anything shaped like a teddy bear to be appealing, edible or not. But normal Americans, they’re a different story. To these people, perfection just might come in the form of a teddy bear wearing Stars and Stripes underpants, or something. These normal Americans are the lucky ones whose preferences apparently dictate the mold choices made by the (probably Chinese) manufacturers of “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine.”

By the end of our session, I had scrubbed out the double boiler four times. A pile of dirty molds sat by the sink awaiting my attention, and the cellophane bags had muddied themselves every time we tried to package a lollipop or Oreo. Chocolate smears streaked across the floor. Most distressingly, our labors had resulted in nothing more than a pile of limp, grayish chocolates coaxed into barely identifiable shapes, sticky with impotent blobs after our attempts to drizzle white chocolate artistically across their tops had failed.

I began to wonder whether the name “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” was actually the punch line of an elaborate joke perpetrated against humankind, or at least against me. Perhaps “The Ultimate Chocolate Machine” was actually meant to refer to me, rather than the small, cheap double boiler. The experiment with Rachael had only proved what a defective mechanism I truly am. To assuage my feelings of inferiority, I reached for a chocolate teddy bear and bit its little head right off.

Epilogue:

ME: “Dude, get your camera and I’ll take a picture of you eating a chocolate for the blog.”

RANDY: “But they’re gross. They taste gross. The texture is gross. I guess I could hold one close to my mouth and pretend.”